Assignment 2
EXAMPLE 1
My name is Nuno and I am an international student from the Netherlands. I am currently a junior majoring in Marketing. Before attending Portland State University I obtained my college degree in Hotel Management which was at a local college in the Netherlands. For my studies for the Hotel Management degree, I had complete two five-month-long internships at two different hotels. During this time I learned how to problem-solve as I was working at the Front Desk of the hotel which was quite stressful at times. For this internship, I had to do a lot of research due to the wide variation of questions that we would get from our guests. Because of the fact that most of the time it was quite hectic at the Front Desk, it forced you to critically select information when you were doing research as well as improved my capability of doing research quickly. I believe that these skills helped me when I first had to do research for my classes at PSU as well as when I had to work in groups. The major difference between doing research for work and for school is that for work I do want the information to be accurate but you won't need to cite where you retrieved the information from. When I would do research for I work I do feel more pressure as the results of the research have an influence on my job performances and indirectly my employment.
After I graduate from PSU I plan to apply to work at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. I want to work as an international student advisor or for their communications team. The research skills that I gained from my internships, as well as my studies at Portland State, will be very useful in the future when I might have to do research for questions from students or from my co-workers.
The Curiosity Self-Assessment was interesting by seeing that I scored fairly high on "epistemic curiosity" and lower on "interpersonal curiosity" which I think is relatable to growing up in the Netherlands and our culture, as people are respectful of others privacy and it is inappropriate to ask about someone's personal life. I think this test gave you a good perspective of what kind of researcher applies in everyday life as well as researching a company for a class assignment.
EXAMPLE 2
Good afternoon everyone, I hope you all are doing well. A little bit of context and background information about me first. The main jobs I have been exposed to are mainly customer service focused such as delivery driving for Dominos and working in the deli for Albertsons. Last year my friend and I started up our own deck staining, pressure washing, and roof treatment company where customer service played an even more pivotal role than it did previously. This time, it wasn’t the giant corporation’s credibility that was at stake, it was my credibility. An academic and career goal of mine is to work for a nonprofit in the human resources management department of the company. After exposing myself to accounting, economics, statistic, a little bit of finance, and marketing, I find myself gravitating towards the human side of business the most. Emotional intelligence, more so than other business majors, is a truly essential side of managing employees and making sure they feel like they are in an inclusive environment. Becoming a business owner, even a small one, brings with it its own set of challenges. Me being responsible for all of the rewards and profits means I am also responsible and held to a different standard in terms of knowing what I am talking about. Unlike being in a regular job, being a business owner forces you to not run and cry to the manager when you don’t know how to handle a situation. My credibility and reputation are on the line constantly with my clients. That is why developing proper research skills has been a necessity for me. Research skills I’ve developed on the job are first and foremost collecting as much information about a particular stain brand as I can, learning possible drawbacks to particular stain, how to properly use a pressure washer without causing property damage, amongst many other questions. Research is essential to build and maintain credibility when speaking to a client/coworker/boss. Research for work is inherently more meaningful, stressful, and essential to get absolutely right. If you fail one class you can still pay your bills, if you lose your job you can’t pay your bills; simple as that. I completely agree that most college graduates are not prepared for work in some ways. I have enough self-awareness to admit that trying to analyze and find peer-reviewed journals can be a very difficult job. It is research that isn’t done in a millisecond, unlike how fast Instagram/google/twitter operates. The fact that teachers provide blatantly obvious structure and rubrics telling students what they want, and students STILL can’t research properly is something I truly don’t have words for. The curiosity self-assessment showed me that I mainly possess Interpersonal curiosity which indicates to me that I am someone who is sociable and human in nature. I take advantage of the fact I’m human and use that curiosity to engage with other humans to learn more about their lives, transferable skills I can learn from them, or lessons I can learn from them. Connections and people are the most important things to me, and my self-assessment seems to verify this with a high degree of validity.